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Asset Name:
E007967 - Graham, William Henry (1904 - 1995)
Title:
Graham, William Henry (1904 - 1995)
Author:
Royal College of Surgeons of England
Identifier:
RCS: E007967
Publisher:
London : Royal College of Surgeons of England
Publication Date:
2015-09-09

2022-02-07
Description:
Obituary for Graham, William Henry (1904 - 1995), Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
Language:
English
Source:
Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Full Name:
Graham, William Henry
Date of Birth:
28 December 1904
Place of Birth:
Orton, Westmorland
Date of Death:
1 July 1995
Place of Death:
Garstang, Lancashire
Occupation:
Titles/Qualifications:
MRCS and FRCS 1934

MB ChB Glasgow 1927
Details:
William Graham, colloquially known as 'Harry', received his medical education at Glasgow University and King's College London, qualifying MB ChB Glasgow in 1927, and passing the FRCS in 1934. Deciding to specialise in urology after junior posts, he was surgeon at St Mary's Hospital, Islington, and assistant in the surgical unit at the British Postgraduate Medical School. He was later urological surgeon at the Royal Infirmary, Preston, at the Chorley and District Hospital, at Westmoreland County Hospital, Kendal, and at Lytham Cottage Hospital. He was also consultant urological surgeon at the Royal Infirmary, Lancaster. He was a member of the Council of the British Association of Urological Surgeons, and an honorary lieutenant-colonel in the RAMC. He published papers on congenital abnormalities of the kidneys. He died on 1 July 1995, survived by his sons Jamie, Bill, Bob and Tom; his wife Helen and son John predeceased him. **See below for an additional obituary uploaded 7 February 2022:** William Henry Graham, always known as Harry, was a urological surgeon at Preston Royal Infirmary, Chorley and District Hospital, Westmorland County Hospital and the Royal Lancaster Infirmary. He was born in Orton, Westmorland, the village where his father, John Graham, was the local GP for 40 years and his mother, Florence Kate Graham née Jarvis, was the church organist. He attended Appleby Grammar School, from where he went to Glasgow to study medicine, qualifying in 1927. While at Glasgow he represented the university at athletics, running the quarter and half mile, and ran for the Atalanta Club of Scottish Universities against the Achilles Club, originally represented by Oxford and Cambridge. Put forward as a possible for the 1924 Olympics, he was asked by his father whether it was to be medicine or running: there was no competition. In June 1927 he was appointed as a junior house surgeon at Preston Royal Infirmary and the following year became a resident surgical officer. Harry moved to London in December 1929 and until 1942 held various surgical posts under men such as William Edward Tanner, Constantine Lambrinudi, William Turner Warwick, Albert Clifford Morson and George Grey Turner, all the while developing his interests and expertise in urology. In 1935 he was granted six weeks study leave at the James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute, Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore under Hugh H Young. On the evening of 10 May 1941 London suffered its heaviest raid of the Blitz. At St Luke's Hospital that evening Harry and one of his colleagues assessed a casualty ward patient and decided he required urgent surgery. They were making their way to the underground emergency operating theatre when Harry turned off the corridor to wash his hands. His colleague went ahead. The next moment a bomb blast hurled Harry across the room. Recovering his senses, he spent some time rescuing orderlies and nurses, and then broke his own leg when a damaged staircase collapsed under him. Returning to where the mess had been, he discovered the entire medical staff on duty that night had been buried in a crater. The hospital was damaged beyond repair and was closed. Already a member of the Home Guard, in 1942 Harry decided it was time to sign up. Following basic training at Aldershot and promotion to major in the Royal Army Medical Corps, he was posted as acting officer in charge of the surgical division, 24th London General Hospital, at Campbell College, Belfast from 1942 to 1943, where in letters home he recorded many opportunities to develop his urological expertise. Posted to India in 1943, he served as a surgical specialist with the 14th British General Hospital in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh. On 24 November 1943, he was appointed as a lieutenant colonel and officer in charge of the surgical division 133rd Indian General Hospital, Bareilly and then in Ranchi, Bihar. Again, many opportunities presented themselves to develop his interest in urology. On the surrender of the Japanese he took over the Alexandra Road Hospital, Singapore, designated 69th Indian General Hospital. There he also rescued his brother-in-law, a civilian prisoner in the Sime Road prison camp. He was mentioned in dispatches in September 1946. The family have many letters describing his life during the war. In 1946 Harry Graham was appointed as a consultant urological surgeon to the Preston Royal Infirmary, the Chorley and District Hospital and to Lytham Cottage Hospital. To these were added the Westmorland County Hospital, Kendal in 1947 and in 1948 the Royal Lancaster Infirmary. He was a founder-member and council member of the British Association of Urological Surgeons and was a president of the section of urology of the Royal Society of Medicine. Over the years he held a number of posts on hospital management committees and served on the editorial committee of the *British Journal of Urology* from 1962. He published a number of urological papers including ‘Transplantations of ureters into the large bowel and its effects upon the kidneys’ (*Brit J Surg* 1940 27[107] 540-52) and ‘Injuries to the urogenital tract’(*Proc R Soc Med* 1968 May;61[5]: 477-83). Former departmental registrars were appointed to consultancy posts as far away as Australia, Tasmania, South Africa, Canada and New Zealand and as near as Bolton. Harry Graham designed (or co-designed) several instruments including the Morson-Graham bladder retractor, the Graham modification of Millin’s cystoscope and the Graham x-ray grid kidney stone localiser. Following his retirement in 1969, Harry continued with private practice for a few years before, as he put it, ‘knocking the dust out of the attics’ to tap chests as medical officer at the local Royal Ordnance Factory. In November 1935 Harry Graham married the American Helen Caroline Brooke of Baltimore, Maryland who had graduated in the history of medicine at the University of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania and had been sent by Henry Sigerist in the summer of 1933 to London to carry out research at the British Museum. They had five boys – John, James, William, Robert and Thomas. A man of great natural charm, a delightful raconteur and a peerless host, Harry's other interests were shooting, fishing and pigeon racing, in which he was president of his club for many years; in 1969 his bird won one of the great cross-channel races. Helen predeceased him in 1987, and he now lies with her in the churchyard at Orton, next to his parents and his beloved eldest son, a few steps from where he was born, just over 90 years earlier. Robert Graham
Rights:
Copyright (c) The Royal College of Surgeons of England

Image Copyright (c) Image reproduced with kind permission of the Graham family
Collection:
Plarr's Lives of the Fellows
Format:
Obituary
Format:
Asset
Asset Path:
Root/Lives of the Fellows/E007000-E007999/E007900-E007999
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JPEG Image
File Size:
75.97 KB